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 Parenting 101 - Parenting Advice 10 Best Gifts For Your Teen By Patt and Steve Saso Introduction  When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the man around. When I turned twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.—Mark Twain All parents want what is best for their kids. Whether they are sixteen-months-old or sixteen-years-old, we want them to have the best that we can possibly offer. When they are little, it is relatively easy to provide them with what they need. It may take a lot out of us physically, but we have the comfort of knowing that what we are doing is really what’s best for them. Parenting teenagers, however, is a different kind of challenge. Not only are we sometimes unsure about what is best, we are dealing with teens who often have strong ideas of their own about what’s best for them. There are many reasons why it is sometimes hard to know what is best for your teen. The world has changed drastically and teenagers are different today than just a generation ago. Traditional parenting roles have shifted as well. Society and culture are different today. There are fewer supports for us as we try to raise responsible kids. Family therapist Doug Sholl notes that “traditional beliefs about personal morality, family loyalty, and parental authority” are often at odds with “the voracious media-driven youth culture.” Because of societal and cultural influences, this generation of teenagers is different. Anthony Wolf, in his book Get Out of My Life, But First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall? writes: Teenagers have changed. This is not an illusion. Teenagers treat the adults in their lives in a manner that is less automatically obedient, much more fearless, and definitely more outspoken than that of previous generations. While it is true that teenagers are different today, in other significant ways teenagers are the same as they have been for many years. Teens today still struggle for independence from their parents, look to their peers for acceptance, are challenged by feelings of inferiority and lack of self-confidence. They deal with enormous emotional and interpersonal changes, search for their sex-role identity, and make plans for the future. What makes it more difficult than ever to be a teenager today is that the world they live in is less predictable than it was in the past. This makes the relationship between parent and child much shakier, compared to a time when change happened more slowly. Parenting has changed too. When we were kids, many of us returned home from school to a parent, usually our mother, who stayed home full-time. Today, both parents are working and they are working longer hours. Consequently, they are more stressed out and isolated than in past generations. And in the thirty percent of American homes headed by a single parent, the stress is even greater. Exhausted and isolated parents often do not have the time to take care of their own emotional needs, let alone the needs of their children. Drained of their internal resources, they are unable to bring the kind of parental authority into the family that their children need. What’s more, many parents are less clear about what is important to them and what values and morals they want to pass on to their children. Sometimes parents say one thing and do another, thereby sending unclear messages to their children. Thomas Lickona, in Educating For Character, writes, “Many . . . parents are bright and successful at their jobs but are not grounded in a clear sense of their own values. [This] gets in the way of their offering moral counsel to their children or taking stands that require moral courage.”
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